Juliet Samuel: Those worried about an establishment stitch-up won't have been convinced by the PM

David Cameron had done his homework. He was full of figures, facts and talking points. He had lists of endorsements. He was repeating audience members’ names back to them. He was smooth and fluid and articulate.

And yet… it was all so polished the audience could have been forgiven for thinking they were watching a computer-generated image. A very clever one.

Mention immigration and he’ll talk about the single market. Mention scaremongering and he’ll go one better by talking about what a very important market it is. Mention sovereignty and he’ll give you “the biggest market in the world”. And all the while relying heavily on that slippery PR man trick he had been silent about for weeks: his flimsy renegotiation of power with the EU. The audience wasn’t buying it.

Mr Cameron couldn’t have been better briefed or more determined to deliver his canned lines. Some of them were good. He sounded authoritative. But for those worried about the scaremongering tactics of an establishment stitch-up, he had little to offer.

Janet Daley: David Cameron made it clear whose side he is really on...

Cameron won't have won over any Tory - or Labour - Brexit voters with this performance. He had only one theme and he repeated it over and over again: the EU is Very Big. It is too big for us to risk leaving it. And all the Big Organisations (and Big Vested Interests) agree with that. There you have it. Any problems created by our membership would get worse, he claimed, if we left. That is because the economy would be weaker outside of the Big Single Market.

He looked defensive when he was asked about immigration. He looked very defensive when he was challenged about scare-mongering. He looked very, very defensive when he was accused of making indefensible promises about reducing the numbers of migrants. He returned at every question - whether it was about unlimited immigration or the impossible strains on public services - to the risk to the economy if we left the single market, but he never confronted the possibility that we could negotiate trade terms with the EU (even though that would be in the EU's interest).

This was a depressing event. Cameron doesn't seem to get it. Appealing to the authority of Big international organisations, Big Unions, Big Corporate Interests and the Bank of England just makes his stance look even more suspicious: like a confederacy of the Huge against ordinary people.

John McTernan: The Remain campaign will be disappointed that the PM didn't stick to its core message

David Cameron found it harder to get his message across than he will have expected.

First, he found Faisal Islam far feistier than he expected - the combination of command of the facts, humour and a slight lack of respect for the office of Prime Minister unnerved Cameron. Someone in his office should have shown some of Faisal's devastating interviews in the Scottish referendum.

Second, he found the issue of immigration harder to deal with than he should have - and that was entirely his own fault. He fell into the trap of defending government policy and, in particular, his unachievable target of reducing net migration to below 100,000. He should have hit hard on the referendum argument - free movement is the price of access to the single market and if Britain closes its borders our economy and our prosperity suffers.

Third, the feistiness and lack of respect were catching. The audience gave the Prime Minister a hard time. The best moment was when a student stopped Cameron in full flow, saying: "I know waffling when I see it". Ouch! Get that woman to stand in for Jeremy Corbyn and Prime Minister's Questions.

All in all, a difficult night for the PM. He will not have swayed many floating voters – and he knew it. You could see his discomfort – as you always can – by the way his face flushed red.

Tom Harris: David Cameron is not used to this kind of scrutiny

It only lasted half an hour, but I’ll bet that to David Cameron it felt more like an hour and a half. At least. When his interrogation by Faisal Islam finally came to a close, you could almost see the Prime Minister exhale in quiet relief.

Islam was hugely effective, quizzing the Prime Minister as he has rarely been quizzed before. And you could tell that he was struggling to answer when he found himself threatening (promising?) to trigger the exit process the week after a Leave vote, even before exit negotiations started. Why? Please tell us, Prime Minister.

And perhaps it was panic that made him claim that Brexit would mean we would lose us “access to the single market”. Really? No access at all?

Appropriately, the first round of applause of the night came when Faisal asked: “What comes first, World War Three or the global Brexit recession?”